Making punches and kicks appear harder than they are?

[dtjohns1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT0AQoIl704 how do you create the effect at :59-1:03? I believe its a combination of ramping and scaling the image at the moment of impact but Im not completely sure. They also use this effect in Irreversible during the fire extinguisher scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIITT0WU9Gg

 

[vcassel]

Use a telephoto lens to compress space and play with the shutter speed.

 

[Svart]

shake the camera ever so slightly when the punches/kicks are supposed to land.

 

[vcassel]

That fire extinguisher scene in Irreversible was done with a dummy if I remember correctly. That film had quite a few post production effects added to it.

 

[clang]

And good sound fx always help...

 

[WildTrackDave]

Throw in the edit on impact. His reaction will affect the perception of how hard the hit is.

 

[vcassel]

dtjohns1, do you have After Effects? A neat trick is to set up two keyframes on the clip's Position bracketing the impact of the punch, then select both keyframes and add Wiggler to them with a jagged noise type. Make sure to turn on motion blur.

 

[RyanT]

You can also try shooting at 22 fps. Sometimes helps to speed up the movement and give it a bit more action.

 

[MotionFx]

or remove select frames in post to exaggerate speed, we do that a lot in movies. blow up at cam punches and ad camera shake.

 

[RyanT]

Do you remove like 1 frame every 10 frames or something? Or just like, 1 frame before the impact?

 

[vcassel]

Do you remove like 1 frame every 10 frames or something? Or just like, 1 frame before the impact?

It's a common animation tactic for gags. Say the Coyote is flying towards a wall nose first and hits it at even keyframes and inbetweens; if you take out a frame or two or three before impact, and replace it with one frame with the Coyote stretched out a lot, the impact will be more pronounced. The analog for squash and stretch here would be motion blur. The more frames you take out before impact, the greater the effect, but you would need to compensate with motion blur.

BTW I'm incredibly excited by the motion blurring options on the new generation of Red cams!